~Jimmy Page
Mage Music 72
Sometimes the best music is raw and ugly, jagged and hard to bear. Sometimes it is sloppy. It can be sweaty and dirty and offensive. And sometimes it’s so starkly beautiful you have a hard time breathing because of it.
Sometimes, without you ever being able to figure out why, the best music is so good it hurts to hear it and it makes you cry.
The best music is all the above and more, because the best music has Magick in it. The Magick grabs the soul and shoves the Universe right in. Mage music is life itself and we recognize it. That’s what makes it the best.
It’s dangerous. It’s risky. But you still have to let it in. You still have to open up. You have to still give it everything you have. That is the price of Magick.
[Opinion alert! What follows is personal opinion of the author!*]
Blending, merging, becoming something new
Ironically, Jimmy Page’s full immersion in Led Zeppelin, with the extraordinary results that came from his doing so, has been a major obstacle to his continuing forward musically. Robert Plant has moved on by taking a different musical path. But Jimmy Page, who I believe has unfinished business with the path he started out on, is held back by the public’s refusal to let go of Led Zeppelin.
How can new music stand on its own merits if it is always faulted for not being something else? How can Jimmy Page’s musical vision be appreciated if instead of hearing the message of his guitar people are listening for a singer’s voice that isn't there?
But it works both ways. Listening well to Mage music can be an act of Magick just as a Mage’s making the music is. It takes desire and will on the listener's part: desire to fully hear, will to not allow outside influences to deter the listener from the path. The ritual: The music itself, the point where it all comes together.
Coverdale - Page
I highly recommend that you decide to listen well to Coverdale/Page. This means listening with the desire to fully hear what is there in that music, not what is missing from it. There is power in this music, music that - like almost everything Jimmy Page has done post-Led Zeppelin - has never received as much acclaim as is deserved. Here are two mature and accomplished musicians, each with their own power, who attempted a two-way musical mind meld in order to create something new, and yet so many people have missed what was going on entirely.
*The usual caveat applies: My opinion does not have to become your opinion. I merely offer these ideas as food for thought.
Sometimes, without you ever being able to figure out why, the best music is so good it hurts to hear it and it makes you cry.
The best music is the music that the musician falls into and pulls meaning from, and that the listener falls into and receives from the Universe through the music. It doesn't matter who the musician is - what matters is what he can do.
The best music is all the above and more, because the best music has Magick in it. The Magick grabs the soul and shoves the Universe right in. Mage music is life itself and we recognize it. That’s what makes it the best.
It’s dangerous. It’s risky. But you still have to let it in. You still have to open up. You have to still give it everything you have. That is the price of Magick.
[Opinion alert! What follows is personal opinion of the author!*]
Blending, merging, becoming something new
Ironically, Jimmy Page’s full immersion in Led Zeppelin, with the extraordinary results that came from his doing so, has been a major obstacle to his continuing forward musically. Robert Plant has moved on by taking a different musical path. But Jimmy Page, who I believe has unfinished business with the path he started out on, is held back by the public’s refusal to let go of Led Zeppelin.
How can new music stand on its own merits if it is always faulted for not being something else? How can Jimmy Page’s musical vision be appreciated if instead of hearing the message of his guitar people are listening for a singer’s voice that isn't there?
But it works both ways. Listening well to Mage music can be an act of Magick just as a Mage’s making the music is. It takes desire and will on the listener's part: desire to fully hear, will to not allow outside influences to deter the listener from the path. The ritual: The music itself, the point where it all comes together.
Coverdale - Page
I highly recommend that you decide to listen well to Coverdale/Page. This means listening with the desire to fully hear what is there in that music, not what is missing from it. There is power in this music, music that - like almost everything Jimmy Page has done post-Led Zeppelin - has never received as much acclaim as is deserved. Here are two mature and accomplished musicians, each with their own power, who attempted a two-way musical mind meld in order to create something new, and yet so many people have missed what was going on entirely.
Look at the album cover: a merge sign. It's the first hint.
Look at the titles. There is a story being told.
Then open yourself to the bigger message. This music is dangerous. It is full of brutality and anguish, hope and forgiveness – and it is an invitation. If there is not so much light in it, the dark is so dark as to make the slightest gleam a blinding laser. Follow the light where it leads.
Can I say for sure that Jimmy Page meant what I believe is going on? Of course not. But what I can say is this: Jimmy Page is not known for creating music by accident. Pay attention.
*The usual caveat applies: My opinion does not have to become your opinion. I merely offer these ideas as food for thought.
I wanna start my comment tellin' you that this is one of the best posts of your blog. I agree with everything you wrote down on the number 71 and 72 of Mage Music, and even better, i want to emphasize some of the aspects.
ReplyDeleteI'm only a seventeen boy, even if I have this visceral passion for Led Zeppelin, and i hadn't the lucky to live that beautiful period between sixtiees and seventiees. But i feel all its magnificence and also the nostalgie, now that is all ended. Or at least, nowadays we can see and listen to the huge consequences. A real Gift. But i think that everything has its moment, and however great it may have been, it cannot be recreated by no Magick. The Mage who created all at the beginning, can found in the primary alchemy the elements to repeat the Magick, but only for a few time. Time flows on things and change them, so it's normal and right that a musician of the caliber of Jimmy Page, or also Plant and Jones, finds his own way on another path, maybe more radicated in another genre. And this is not necessarily a bad thing; on the contrary, it could bring to other masterpieces.
By the way. What's a masterpiece? Is not something with a price or which can be valued by people who don't 'feel' emotions inside, when they find one. It's something created with a piece of soul, it's giving eternity to this something. Something that could be an unusual beauty. I remember when i was i child and i listened 'Whole Lotta Love', for the first time. I was shocked, it was a song which went over everything i could ever have imagined; but then I realized how it was a brutal perfection. The best music is not for everyone, of course, and not the same for everyone, but it's something - in my opinion - which can resist to the sands of time, a Magick which can live also when the Mage doesn't live anymore.
Your point that "Time flows on things and change them" is so very true and so key to understanding the reality of what is possible today. New Magick does not come from what was, but what is. This doesn't mean that music isn't influenced or based on old music - because it is - but Magick is only created by transforming the current reality. Not even the most powerful Mage can change the past.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your interesting comments!
Magnificent Lif and very thought provoking as usual. And only people who listen very hard even understand what he is doing with his music. You hear it and I hear it and we are transformed because of it. Thank you Lif:)
ReplyDeleteThank you, Star!
ReplyDelete